Spain is mandating that mobile carriers keep their networks running for a minimum of four hours during power outages.
The Spanish government has issued new rules requiring mobile network operators to sustain service even when the grid goes dark. The regulation sets a four-hour floor — meaning carriers must have backup power infrastructure, such as batteries or generators, capable of bridging that gap. No grace period or phase-in timeline was specified in the available details.
The rule addresses a real vulnerability: when the lights go out at scale, mobile networks often fail within minutes, cutting off the emergency calls and location data people need most. Spain's April 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout — one of the largest in European history — knocked out communications alongside power, exposing exactly how quickly modern infrastructure collapses without a redundancy mandate.
Other European countries have nudged carriers toward resilience through voluntary frameworks and informal pressure; Spain is now writing it into law. Whether four hours is enough to matter in a prolonged outage is a fair question — but it's a harder floor than most of the continent has managed to set.